Teach Your Daughter to Exclude Others: BarbieGirls MP3
July 26, 2007 by Lauren
I thought Barbie had enough accessories, but apparently I'm wrong. She now has an MP3 player roughly shaped like herself. What makes this MP3 oh-so-special and exclusive for your little girl? It plugs into a dock that will unlock a slew of pages that include games an chat rooms. These pages can't be accessed without the MP3 player. I guess there goes 'sharing is caring'.
“Over the next few years, you’ll see a lot of companies finding ways to
create products that are Web enabled,” said, Marc Rosenberg, chief
marketing officer at Zizzle. “The monetization for us comes from the
product, and not from the Web.”
I'm not saying the advancement is bad, but it's a bit unnerving to bring up children this way. Their leisure time and even the ways they are raised have shifted to heavier web involvement, and it's natural that toys have to follow. The fact is, hot wheels don't cut it like they used to (unless you can plug it into your PC and download virtual tracks).
This gadget costs $59.99 and only gets worse from there for you, your wallet, and your child's mannerisms. These MP3 player girls have additional 'outfits' which will unlock even more exclusive chat rooms and pages. The MP3 player itself has a measly 512MB of internal memory, though there's a good chance the kids won't care. It's very possible for them to only want this gadget in order to avoid being excluded (thus excluding others themselves). What a super-fab cycle.
I'm probably reading into it too much, but it still makes me itch a little. As far as the company, the concept is really ingenious. This is exactly the type of thing that up-and-coming 'it' girls will beg their moms for, and the 'it' girl moms will probably go for it. I have a little trouble seeing kids using MP3 players, but then again, I still get weirded out at the sight of 8-year-olds with Razrs.
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